Kotaro Makaritoru is a story about teenage karate expert, Kotaro Shindou and his unusual time spent at Turugamine High School. The series has began in 1982, a year before Dragonball, and is still going to this very day. Over the span of 18 years, many characters come and go; and the style of the art changes drastically.
I was drawn to this series by Hiruta's incredible storytelling and great artwork. There are some great situations and terific fight scenes in this manga. What really blew me away was the fact that this manga is as old as I am! Pretty damn amazing if you ask me.
I believe that this manga is better than Ranma 1/2 and Dragonball. In Ranma, you have some great storytelling but none of the stories are related. The art is great as well as some of the cast, but there is little development aside from Ranma and Akane.
Dragonball is considered one of the greatest manga of all time. The first half is great, but from about volume 20 onward, the story begins to repeat with only subtle differences between story arcs. This is what spawned the nickname, "Drag on Ball."
Kotaro has as many if not more characters than Ranma. However, Hiruta makes sure that even the most simple character has a big part somewhere down the line. He always somehow ties diffent parts of the story together. For example, things that happen to Kotaro in volume 1 are brought up again in volume 50. This is no easy task. Hell, just remembering what happened in volume 1 could be hard.
I still like Ranma and DB very much. I just like Kotaro more. My goal is to make Kotaro more popular. Most people have no clue as to what Kotaro Makaritoru is. Everybody I know who has come into contact with this series loves it.
Here is a list of links to my informational pages concerning Kotaro.
There are too many characters to count in Kotaro Makaritoru. Curtis Hoffmann made a page and made brief descriptions on nearly every character in the original series.
I have scanned all 59 covers from the original series and all 22 from the second series.
These very detailed summaries were made by Curtis Hoffmann and put into HTML by Kenji Miyazawa.
1-16
17-29
30-36
36-45
46-51
52-59
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Well that's about it. Kotaro Makaritoru and Shin Kotaro Makaritoru are copywritten by Tatsuya Hiruta, Kodansha Comics, and Shonen Magazine 1982-2000. This page has been made by Mark Marquez of Fallout Studios. Send the Studio and E-mail. Fallout Studios
